Today, Microsoft at their press conference at Barcelona, unveiled the Windows Phone 7 series OS. The new Windows Phone 7 OS, is very different from what we have seen from Microsoft all these years. The UI has nice animations and the transitions in the UI is also very smooth.

Along with the change in OS, Microsoft also made changes on the buttons of the phone. From now Windows Phone will have three buttons on the front- start, search and back. The start screen of the new Windows Phone 7 will have tiles.

In these tiles, we can add applications, playlist etc. These tiles will be like an online widget, taking an example of facebook, if your friend updates its status it will be reflected on the tiles. The first thing that Microsoft showed was the calendar. The calendar was very refreshing with views like days, agenda. The calendar detects the phone numbers and address in the browser, in email and messages, so we don’t have to copy paste them.

The next thing was the maps. Zooming is done by pinch and transition is smooth. Windows Phone 7 supports multi touch gestures. The local search engine will be Bing.

Microsoft called the Integrated services of the Windows Phone 7 series as Hubs. There are five Hubs altogether. The first is People, which means contacts. Microsoft tried to bring all the info and updates of a particular contact at one place, like info in one pane, latest update on social networking site on the next pane.

The second Hub is Pictures. The layout is simple with options like albums, all, favorites. Some new panel will be there like recently synced items, which contains the update of the social networking sites and friends. Pictures on the phone can be directly uploaded to facebook, thanks to the integrated application.

The third Hub is the Office. Office opens with options for new pages and recently created items. The middle panel shows the created documents. The right panel is the SharePoint panel. There were no pictures or video shown of the UI. It will roll out soon.

The fourth Hub is the music and video. Microsoft said that the Windows Phone 7 will be a Zune. Those who are familiar with Zune will find no problem to recognize this. The options under Zune where music, video, podcast, radio and market.

The fifth and final Hub is for games. the game Hub will feature Xbox LIVE as an inbuilt part of Windows Phone 7. There were no demos shown of a game.

The new OS by Microsoft looks very promising. We will soon update about the first handset to have a Windows Phone 7 and its release date. Stay tuned.